to starve for something better than such poor earthly stuff. Sooner or later, the famine grips it. It grows homesick. Try as it may, it can never quite delude itself into believing that the atmosphere of a secular society is its native air. It wants to fling its windows open towards Jerusalem. It cries aloud for the God who is its home. The blank space in the modern heart, said Julian Huxley, is a "God-shaped blank." How can preaching ever die out while these things are so? Do not listen to the foolish talk which suggests that, for this twentieth century, the preaching of the Word is an anachronism, and that the pulpit, having served its purpose, must now be displaced by press or radio, discussion group or Brains Trust, and finally vanish from the scene. As long as God sets His image on the soul, and men are restless till they rest in Him, so long will the preacher's task persist, and his voice be heard through all the clamour of the world.
It ought to fill you with something of the glad fearlessness of the apostolic preachers, the parresia of the New Testament, to know that, even before you open your mouth to speak, God's secret allies have been at work in the hearts of those now waiting for the Word. It will save you from the false diffidence of misplaced apologetic. Shame on our apologizing for the truth of Christ! Shame on our timid offering of some pithless Gospel denuded of the supernatural, dull unkindled ethics with a Christian tinge, views and impressions of current events with a smattering of the Sermon on the Mount, tame humanistic exhortations
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